Samsung is attempting to establish prior art to invalidate Apple's '915 "pinch-to-zoom" and '381 "rubber-banding" patents, which the Cupertino-based company claims is being infringed upon by a number of devices made by the South Korean electronics giant.

Monday's testimony included a pair of fact witnesses who were involved in technology similar to Apple's patents, but completed their research before the iPhone maker patented its inventions, reports CNet.

LaunchTile

Taking the stand first was University of Maryland professor and LaunchTile co-creator Ben Bederson, who gave an in-court demo of the UI zooming technology. LaunchTile, a project backed by Microsoft Research, was invented as an alternative smartphone input method which allowed for one-handed operation.

According to Bederson, the technology was released in 2004 to help "people access a lot of information" on mobile devices like the then-popular Palm PDA series of products. LaunchTile and its partner AppLens also aimed to solve issues related to navigation on devices without touchscreens.

As Bederson's demonstration showed, LaunchTile allows a user to navigate 36 on-screen applications with one thumb by zooming in on thumbnail images of mobile apps. The interface zooms in from a 36-app "world view" screen to a so-called "zone view," at which point a user can select from the four tiled on-screen thumbnails to enter "application view." Bederson calls this a "pure zoom" method for selecting a specific application. Simple swipe gestures are also supported by the technology.

With LaunchTile, Samsung sought to invalidate Apple's '381 patent for overscroll bounce, a unique UI feature that alerts a user when the limits of an image or scrollable page are reached. Apple lawyers were quick to point out the differences between Bederson's technology and the '381 patent, including LaunchTile's "snap back" feature not being present when the edges of application tiles are reached.

DiamondTouch

Samsung's second witness was Adam Bogue, creator of Mistubishi Electric Research Laboratories' DiamondTouch display table. The projector-based table is akin to Microsoft's original Surface in that it supports multi-touch gesture inputs to manipulate displayed imagery. Bogue notes the technology was created with collaboration in mind, allowing users to gather around a digital table to discuss ideas.

DiamondTouch's primary gesture was called FractalZoom which used a single touch for scrolling and two fingers for pinch and zoom. Interestingly, Bogue claims he demoed the multitouch tech to Apple hardware engineers in 2003, though the meeting was fruitless. Samsung did, however, submit a number of e-mails Bogue kept concerning the Apple demo as evidence.

Source: bogue12's YouTube channel

While DiamondTouch was presented as a challenge to Apple '915 "pinch-to-zoom" patent, a follow-up technology called TableCloth was also submitted to invalidate the '381 patent. TableCloth, built for Adobe Flash, featured a bounce-back animation for images dragged offscreen. Bogue claims the technology was available for viewing on the company's multitouch-enabled PCs stationed in MERL's lobby.

Apple v. Samsung will return to court on Tuesday with more Samsung witness testimony, while both parties are expected to wrap up arguments next week.

Okay, well first off the Pinch to zoom is clearly nothing like Samsungs LaunchTile.

Second off, Samsung's "DiamondTouch" is the exact opposite of pinch to zoom, in Samsung's system, you use it to change window size, in Apple's you use it to actually make objects appear larger onscreen, without affecting the size of the window.

First of all, that LaunchTile is the most lame, stupid and poorly devised method for navigating anything that I have ever seen! That's a clusterbleep of epic proportions. I think that professor needs to spend more time teaching and less time smoking pot. Further, I see no correlation with any patent that Apple is asserting.

Secondly, in the DiamondTouch video was a perfect example of wasted R+D money. Oh look, I can circle a word, and then you can circle the word too! Ooohhh!!! We can circle the word together! STARS!!! Seriously, is this some kind of kinky computer nerd foreplay? An exhibit in the Crayola factory tour? WTF is it? Oh, and 1991 called and they want their Christmas-themed sweater back. Again, how is this pinch to zoom? The only thing that was vaguely, almost, not-at-all pinch-to-zoom was resizing a window with two fingers as if you had two mouse pointers. Pinch uses a thumb and forefinger. Ask the girl in the sweater to tell you about how that's done properly after all that touch lovin.

Thirdly, Samsung... stick out your right hand.. extend your forefinger and thumb. Now place that on your forehead. That's what you are... you may need to find a mirror, and an English translator.

Maybe you're looking at it wrong?
Anyway: Looks like this may well be a case of... Prior Art = Invalid Patent.

Really, would that be like a fire throwing light onto a wall invalidating any projector patents or film based camera's invalidating any digital camera patents?

You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea, although the ideas are similar in these examples, the implementations are different enough foe Apple to ba awarded patents on there specific method.

Better than my Bose, better than my Skullcandy's, listening to Mozart through my LeBron James limited edition PowerBeats by Dre is almost as good as my Sennheisers.

I was under the impression that the patent office does not research whether the item being patented is unique, only whether it can be patented under the patent rules. It is up to the applicant to research whether the thing being patented is truly a unique invention and then if there is a dispute, it is handled in the courts. If the patent office took responsibility for the validity of a patented item being a unique invention, then these trials would not be needed.

Then note that the comment sounds retarded. But don't refer to the poster as retarded. I think you could even call a username as being stupid but to alter it's spelling in a deragoaty way is an attack on the poster and not the post. Now go grind his irrational comments to dust.

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I see them as the same. Two points are pulled together or apart to make something larger or smaller. The application may be different, but the gesture is the same. It think Apple has lost on that one. The jury is out on rubber-banding... for me, anyway.

I can't believe you linked to a site that requires Flash. Those are getting hard to find these days.

Unfortunately Comedy Central-based stuff is like that. I think clips, not full episodes, from The Daily Show and Colbert Report are not playable on iDevices. In my defense I did link to an additional video on YouTube.

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2:36 shows one-handed pinch to zoom out, a few seconds later it's a two-handed pull to zoom in.

[sarcasm]Oh, but apple did it on a phone, that's true innovation.[/sarcasm]

Let me get this straight. Apple's efforts are invalidated in your mind because the year before Apple releases a full fledged product they spent many years developing and have patents on multitouch capacitance gestures are null and void because they didn't demo an unfinished concept that wasn't part of an actual product first? Makes perfect sense¡Edited by SolipsismX - 8/13/12 at 10:54pm

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But in this case, what does your well-known quote say about a corporation that tries to steal but gets caught and doesn't get away with it? I suppose Samsung is something less than a good artist and much less than a great artist!